Coyote Waits Movie Review 2003

Another adaptation of a Tony Hillerman novel, following "Skinwalker," about Navaho policemen Jim Chee (Beach) and Joe Leaphorn (Studi). Chee discovers the dead body of a fellow officer near some caves and finds drunken suspect Ashie Pinto (Herman) wandering the roads with a bottle and a gun. Since Leaphorn's wife Emma (Tousey) and Pinto are kin, she requests her husband investigate while Chee also has some questions. Pinto told legends involving Butch Cassidy to a local professor, who believed the outlaw survived Bolivia, only to die on the Navaho reservation. A Vietnamese immigrant with ties to the CIA and Native American mysticism all play their part but the slow-paced story is sometimes confusing.

Distribution

WGBH/Boston, PO Box 2284, South Burlington, VT 05407-2284, Phone: (617)492-2777, Toll-free: 800-989-8670, Fax: (802)864-9846, Email: sarah_slater@wgbh.org, URL: http://www.wgbh.org

Available on VHS, DVD
Running time 105 minutes.

Cast and Crew

Genres

Mystery & Suspense, Native America, Police Detectives, Folklore & Legends

Screenplay

Lucky Gold

Cast

Wes Studi, Adam Beach, Sheila Tousey, Jimmy Herman, Keith Carradine, Graham Greene, Alex Rice, Bodhi (Pine) Elfman, Long Nguyen

Cinematography

Roy Wagner

Director

Jan Egleson

Music

B.C. Smith